The First Stirring of Love (Part III)

Part I || Part II
The end of our brief relationship hit me hard. Although I had only known Michelle for a short period, I had high expectations for our romance. After all, most girls just aren’t that flirtatious. Most are unwilling to blow out their colon regularly. Even Trader Joe’s High Fiber Cereal wasn’t popular with girls. After all, light sugary fare (which could hardly be considered a real meal) has a the bubblegum pop-music feel so many girls adore.
My hopes had been focused on Michelle, like sunlight through a magnifying glass. I’ve been through a lot of relationships in the recent past, with a lot of wonderful women, but nothing had really worked out. It felt like I was throwing the sticky men included in bags of cereal who flop down walls at the monolithic wall of life, but they all slid down eventually. I thought she’d stick. To make matters worse, I began building her up in my mind, making her into someone who couldn’t possibly exist.
Daydreaming at my job, I’d imagine us going to the supermarket in the afternoon, and walking down the cereal isle with arms outstretched, two carts abreast, knocking boxes right into the baskets. I imagined us touring the General Mills factory. We’d be eating Basic 4 straight off the assembly line, and in would burst Dave Mackay, CEO of Kellogg’s, in the nude, and he’d empty boxes of Rice Crispies all over us. A week’s worth of nights were wasted staring vacuously at the television screen. But what I was really imagining was her hopping through the door dressed as Trix rabbit, and she’d finally get to taste my fresh Trix.
I’m not a discriminating lover. I tolerated a girl who insisted we eat Rice Crispies dressed as Snap and Crackle, with her greasy high school boyfriend playing the role of Crunch. But I have to draw a line somewhere. As long as a girl fills her bowl with cereal before she pours the milk, we’re basically ok. If she doesn’t – it’s over.
After all – where’s the intimacy? They say relationships should be based on more than breakfast, but I just can’t see it. Breakfast ensures physical connectedness, after all, and that can’t be discounted.
So I missed Michelle, but it wasn’t really her that I missed – just the concept she stood for. Someone whose cereal I could pour, or who could sweep up when I tried emptying Cheerios through a torn cellulose bag. It was really the graceful cereal pouring of Lindsay – sweet, sweet Lindsay – who I missed, even after two years.
But I was done with Michelle.

Should Milk Shine (A Poem)

Should milk shine, the holy glint,
Caught in a circle of unaccustomed light,
Would dehydrate, and any boy of cereal
Look twice before he fell from grace.
The features in their private dark
Are formed of sand, but let the false day come
And from her lips, half-crushed grapenuts fall,
The mummy napkins expose a faded chin.

I have been told to reason by the box,
But box, like brain, leads helplessly;
I have been told to reason by the pulse,
And, when it quickens, alter the pouring pace
Till cereal and milk lie level and the same
So fast I move defying time, the quiet gentleman
Whose beard fills with Wisconsin milk.

I have heard many years of crunching,
And many years should see no change.

The bowl I filled while playing in the park
Has not yet turned soggy.

-Dylan Thomas

The Taste of Milk After Cereal (A Search Engine Term Poem)

Your touch graces the air
Leaves it cool, gentle, sweet;
The taste of milk after cereal
Bleached bones beside warm flesh:
But fact.

Weekend Cereal History #4

No one knows whether the great French Enlightenment thinker Voltaire poured his cereal first or his milk first. Even historians specializing in Voltaire are unsure. He authored 300 volumes, after all, none of which clearly state which he preferred. It isn’t that the historians are incompetent, but that Voltaire wrote ascerbic, sarcastic works, and it’s difficult to intuit when he’s serious and when he’s being ironic. It now seems likely that we’ll never know the truth (but the smart money is on his pouring the cereal first).

Weekend Cereal History #3

The Roman army was renowned for three things:
1. Discipline.
2. Engineering abilities
3. Pouring their milk after their cereal.
In the ancient Mediterranean, most civilization was naturally inclined to pour their milk first. In fact, the only cultures that consistently poured milk after cereal in that time and region were the Macedonians – and about half the Greek city-states (Athens,Thebes,Corinth). Yes, anthropologists recognize signs of milk-after-cereal in Spain. Some sites have even been uncovered in Northern Africa near Carthage. But recent discoveries indicate that only about 1/4 of the population engaged in such practices. Rome – led by its armies – was different.

Cornflake Fitness (Search Engine Term Haiku)

Cornflake fitness high
Cocoa Crispies less wholesome
Bran: a health engine

Sonnet #18: Shall I compare thee to a honeybunch of oats?

Shall I compare thee to a Honeybunch of Oats?
Thou art more lovely and more zesty:
Rough spoons do rumble the taste buds of tongue,
And oat’s solid lease hath all too brief time:
Sometime too cold the milky pool glistens,
And oft’ is his fair complexion dimm’d;
And every clarity from limpid to saccharine decline,
By chance or nature’s changing course sully’d:
But thy eternal crunch shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that crispness thou ownst;
Nor shall Soggy brag thou wanderest in his moisture,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as milk can flow, or cereal tumble,
So long as this, this gives life to thee.

-Shakespeare

The Milk You Pour (A Poem)

The milk you pour encroaches
The bowl is mine I know the slant
Soggy is my enemy your spoon shant stir
Under his strong impulsive spin
The rainbow’s foot is not more apt
To have the centaur lover
So steal bran not O rabbity wind
But leave but still savor
For if the gods would love
Theyd see with eyes like mine
But should not taste like I
Your sweet inducive bran
And raven raisins.

- Dylan Thomas

Weekend Cereal History #2

Both Catherine and Peter the Great of Russia earned their honorifics because they were able to consume Grapenuts without milk; indeed, Peter spent several years condemned to a circus sideshow when he was just a boy, astonishing onlookers with his “iron will.” According to primary sources, they were originally known as “Catherine the Grape” and “Peter the Grapenut,” respectively. Linguists believe that this interpretation of their nicknames was corrupted in a nineteenth-century translation, and the less meaningful name stuck.